Jack never did
by Cranky Cauldron
Summary: Sharon's tongue is loosened by that extra glass of wine, and oh, how she regrets her words to Andy Flynn.. Totally OOC ridiculousness, a temporary upload.


A ridiculous OOC excuse for me to play with the Raydor/Flynn dynamic… I'm so sorry everyone... so very sorry! Incidentally I expect this will only be up temporarily, once I write something actually worth publishing!

Disclaimer: Major Crimes belongs to someone far wealthier than I!

"**Jack never did..."**

Just a normal evening, just a perfectly normal evening. Is what it should have been. But it wasn't. Because she was a fool. A fool with a foolish tongue loosened by too much wine because she wasn't driving tonight, so she could have a _drink,_ a gawddamned glass or _three_ of rouge when she normally drank white, when she had normally eaten three regular meals.

This is not how it started. _This _is how it had started:

'So the kid's out?'

She looked up with a half-smile, 'Lieutenant,' she acknowledged Flynn's presence at her desk, her door ajar, the day in shadows. The man shrugged and sat, uninvited, opposite her, she raised her eyebrows at his assumption but decided not to make a point.

'How'd it go?' he pushed.

She regarded him over the top of her glasses and pondered his interest. '_If_ it went, it went, as well as expected, but that's a big _if,_ Lieutenant.'

'I know, I know. Not my business.'

'No, it's not.' She agreed. 'When Rusty, _if_ Rusty, should decide to …share, then you may make it your… business.'

The lieutenant tilted his head at her tone, 'I'm not-' he paused, 'I'm not asking about the kid, well, I am asking about the-' he scratched his neck awkwardly as he struggled to express himself; Sharon shook her head a little in bewilderment. 'I'm asking about you, well, how you feel about, about how it went.' He ended clumsily but suddenly she saw his intent and it warmed her heart. She put down her pen and relaxed her body posture, aware she had been feeling quite defensive about his nosiness into Rusty's personal affairs and had tensed up, ready to put the detective in his place, very much in his place.

'I'm glad he has begun to open up to me,' she conceded and watched his body language recognise her own opener, he shifted forward.

'What next?' he asked.

'Next?' she puzzled. 'Well that's up to Rusty.'

'No, of course, it's up to Rusty, I just mean, well, you're his guardian ad litum…'

He had lost her again. 'Am I missing something Lieutenant?'

'Well, I'm not exactly an expert myself.'

'An expert at what?' she pushed her glasses up her nose and stared at him.

'You know,' he gestured with his hands palm up, 'the talk.'

'What talk?'

'Well, I wasn't exactly present for it with my daughter so I don't know how it goes but you've got one of each so you must have a better idea of how it-'

She suddenly got where he was going with his rambling and a snort of laughter briefly escaped her lips, stopping his words short. He looked surprised at her reaction.

'Lieutenant,' she began gently, 'I think Rusty's a little past the "talk".' And then the realisation of her words hit home and she was overwhelmed with a surge of sadness that the boy, this young man, should have had such life experiences that "the talk" was rendered unnecessary. Lieutenant Flynn understood and stretched his hand across her desk to lay upon hers, his next words were far softer and less stuttered.

'Doesn't that make it all the more necessary?' Her expression was quizzical so he elaborated. 'He may know the mechanics, but does he know about keeping himself safe, about how relationships should work..?'

Her eyes widened as his words sunk in. Then in horror. 'Oh God!' She exclaimed, and mentally apologised for her blasphemy. 'I have to do "the talk" again!'

Her distressed words made him laugh. 'If in doubt you can always arrange an appointment for him with a sexual health counsellor.'

'But that hardly teaches him what a normal relationship should looks like, goodness knows his mother has shown him nothing of the sort.'

'Then maybe you should lead by example,' grinned Flynn, 'drag Jack out of hiding.'

She glared at him and let her lowered brows show her attitude to that suggestion. He bit the inside of his cheek to avoid smiling at her fierceness. Instead he rose and kept hold of her hand as he did so, lifting their shared grasp from the desk top.

'Come on,' he jerked his head toward the door, 'let me treat you to dinner to make up for giving you the bad news.'

'Fine,' she said, and then uttered the fateful words, 'you can drive, because I now _need_ a drink.'

* * *

'You know,' Raydor said, raising a finger as the idea crystallised, 'the talk might be better coming from a man…' her finger went from pointing at the sky to pointing at her dinner mate.

Andy Flynn's brows attempted to meet his hairline. Stalling for time he re-filled her glass, number three. 'Maybe you should have eaten more than a caeser salad,' he said instead.

'I'm trying to lose weight,' she said and waved her finger in his face. 'Don't change the subject Andy.' He loved how in private she used his first name and how just occasionally she slipped up at work.

'You don't need to lose weight.' She shrugged, an acknowledgment of his words and a dismissal of their relevance. She had caught sight of herself in the bathroom mirror last week and was conscious of new curves, she didn't believe in dieting but in healthy eating, and there had been too many late pizzas with the squad, breakfast burritos with the boy, and a drawer in her office desk was beginning to echo its previous host. She couldn't deny that drinking on a salad stomach was having her three sheets to the wind when a steak would have had her merely tingly and that probably would have been the wine, not the company.

'What if, just what if, _you_ spoke to Rusty about relationships?' she opened her hands up, fingers spread, body language pleading for an out she didn't think she was going to get. Andy shook his head and smirked.

'Sharon, I really think you have more experience here. And let's face it, I'm hardly a relationship guru.'

'You're a _man_,' she emphasised, 'You know –male- things!'

Andy spluttered into his lemon and lime. 'Male things?'

'You – I assume – know how to, uh, protect yourself.'

'Jeez Sharon! Just tell the boy to wear a condom and you're done with that part!'

'That's not what I mean!' She clutched her face. 'Rusty needs to know what normal men want when it comes to relationships, he has only experienced-' she struggled to put it into words. Andy lent forward and took her hands away from her face.

'Sharon,' he smiled. 'He likes men, I do not like men, ergo I am not the best person to have the talk.'

'Ah-hah!' she protested, escaping his hands, 'but you are a man!'

'You've slept with more men that I have,' was his response.

'Touché.' She paused. 'Well as far as I know.' The alarmed expression on Andy's face was worth it.

'I like women, Sharon, just women.'

She smirked and ducked her head so that her hair fell in front of her face. 'Dessert?' Andy asked and his hands, still across the table lifted a lock away and tucked it behind her ear. It was an oddly intimate move for their normally standard colleague dinners out.

'Mmm,' she nodded. 'Share though?' He ordered tiramasu whilst she pondered her state of mind and realised she was drunk. Not to the inelegant stage, but to that hazy stage, that dangerously wonderful stage that made the world seem safe and her mouth to spill words she normally kept tightly under hold. When he turned back, her ruinous mouth opened. 'I may not be the best person to talk to Rusty. I'm not exactly _experienced_. And relationship advice? Look at my not-marriage.'

He frowned and slipped his fingers through hers. 'What do you mean? Like practical advice for being gay? As far as I understand, it's pretty much the same. Wear a condom, get tested, and don't forget to protect yourself for oral too.'

And that was when she became the drunken fool. The fool that revealed too much. That spoke words that couldn't be unspoken, or forgotten because, god damn it, Andy Flynn didn't drink!

'I wouldn't know,' simply put but it confused the heck out of the Lieutenant. She elaborated. 'Jack never did.'

His blank expression gave her a crucial moment to realise what she had revealed and mortification coiled in her stomach, making her taste bile. She pulled her hand from his and covered her mouth briefly before letting them drop to her lap, her eyes fixed on the view outside the window of the restaurant, not wanting to see his face, his pity, even his disgust once the penny dropped. Eventually the silence was too long and too heavy and she looked at him, her expression daring him to mock her.

He was angry. He was looking at her and he was seething. His hands were clenched on the tablecloth, pulling it into his palms and his lips twitched. She was alarmed and her face must have revealed it because he released the cloth and relaxed his hands.

'Never mind,' she said suddenly, artificially bright. She lifted a hand from her lap and waved it away. 'Let's just go home. If you are still alright to give me a lift?'

He cleared his throat but his voice still sounded rough. 'Of course I am.'

They paid for the dessert they hadn't eaten and Andy had them box it for her to take home, the ride home was silent. She sat embarrassed beyond recovery and desperately hoping he would allow this whole night to be relegated to the long-forgotten recesses of their minds.

* * *

This was how it ended. The horribly drunken moment of honesty, ended, not how she had expected, not how she panicked it would.

It was life as normal in the squad room. Flynn as normal. And some leaflets that she just happened to leave out on her dining room table and may have been picked up by Rusty without either one of them ever referring to it. Just as Andy never referred to that night she uttered three foolish words that entirely revealed the nature of her marriage and the lack of… intimacy. _Jack never did_.

Jack turned up one shift, ostensibly looking for a prisoner in holding, the on-duty solicitor for legal aid. He had a black eye and a split lip and she was surprised to see him looking so beat up- once upon a time his lifestyle had led to this being a common occurrence but not so much lately. Not that she kid herself his choices had changed, just his poison of choice.

'How are you Sharon?' he asked and looked ill-at-ease, he winced as the words moved his scabby lip.

'I'm not going to ask what happened,' she informed him bluntly.

'Don't pretend like you don't know!'

'Why would I? You're not my responsibility anymore Jack. Now what do you want? I'm not giving you any money.'

'I don't _need_ your money, and thank you very much for your concern!' They glared at each other across her desk and then something seemed to click in his eyes and he relaxed a tad. 'You really don't know.'

'Jack…' she warned, and put her hands on her hips, a familiar warning sign. He raised his hands in mock submission.

'Fine, fine, I'm going. Nice to see you too, _wife_.'

After he had disappeared down the hall, she sat back in her swivel chair and puzzled the unscheduled meeting. Andy knocked and slipped in, closing the door, he leaned on the back of the chair opposite her, 'Everything all right?'

She tried to smile, but her foolish words echoed every time she looked at the Lieutenant's face and it hurt to realise how much she had bared herself, how unguarded she had been. 'Fine, thank you Lieutenant.' The chair he was leaning on scraped against the floor and her eyes were drawn down to the sound.

His knuckles were bruised.

And _this_ was how it ended.

Because Jack never did.

But maybe Andy would.


End file.
